In traditional telecommunication networks, when a party wishes to establish a communication session with another party, that first party should be familiar with the address of the other party, e.g. a telephone number, an IP address etc., and the user is limited in his ability to establish that communication session to the telephone number dialed, or to the computer where he has currently logged with that IP address specified in the request to establish the session. In other words, in typical prior art systems, each user has one or more identifiers so that once he/she logs in, the system would be able to associate the user with the device logged in. Usually, each device is associated with a pre-determined subscriber, so once the device's number is called, or the log-in address is requested for establishing communication, the system identifies the subscriber by the default number/log-in address, and either makes the connection, or if the subscriber has requested prior to that time to forward the calls (e.g. by defining a “follow-me” address), the system will either transfer the call to that address.
This restriction also characterizes distributed type of systems that have been gaining certain popularity in the recent years. Such distributed systems typically comprise multiple machines, such as computers and other peripheral devices, connected in a network, such as, a Local Area Network (“LAN”), Wide Area Network (“WAN”), or the Internet. Typically, distributed systems require that computational entities (e.g., applications, programs, etc.) running in different address spaces, on different or the same platforms, be able to communicate with each other.
For a basic communication mechanism, distributed systems utilize communication between applications residing in different address spaces. As to the establishing and conducting communication sessions with users of distributed systems, various proposals were made. One such proposal is described in our co-pending application IL 164,577, which describes a method for conducting a real-time, voice over IP media type of communication session between two peer users (or more) by providing at least one replication of a data object to all other platforms associated with the distributed communication network and notifying all these platforms of the creation (or modification) of that data object.
Thus, in distributed systems, the request to establish a call would arrive at the network space to an object associated with the user, irrespective of whether the requested call is eventually established or not. The user will then be able to draw messages or establish calls, but only through the device on which he/she is registered.
As these solutions bear an impact upon the flexibility of the users, e.g. if they may move around the organization they belong and still remain in communication if required, other better suited solutions are required.